ZeroHourS01E05Fox Espana, 29 April 2013

As Hank and Riley investigate a derelict South American medical clinic, flashbacks show how Laila became involved with the Shepherds.

The bonkers Zero Hour continues to thrill and amuse, with unintentional laugh-out-loud moments. Now Laila (Jacinda Barrett) is on the side of the baddies, and we get a whole lot of background to her, from how she joined a convent to make up for her wild youth, and how the Shepherds used her to infiltrate Hank’s (Anthony Edwards) life. In extensive flashbacks we get a South American clinic in which weird experiments are taking place, and where Hank (or is it another lookalike?) and Euro-villain Vincent (Michael Nyquist) are subjects (numbers 352 and 353 to be precise), making them ‘brothers’ in Vincent’s estimation (until he instantly changes his mind and tries to kill Hank and FBI agent Riley—Carmen Ejogo, pictured above)…

One thing that can be said about Zero Hour: like all the best pulp fiction, it eats up plot at a rate of knots. Thrown into the mix is Amy Irving as a rich New York society philanthropist, who funded the clinic and seems aligned with Vincent. Also, Father Reggie (Ken Leung from Lost, so you know he’d be a bad ‘un) turns out to know way more about the Shepherds than he was letting on…

This is all great, if very ridiculous, stuff causing a great deal of laughter, but it is at least engaging as plot twist follows plot twist and daft events and revelations pile up. Director Mario Van Peebles keeps the camera moving in this episode, circling the main protagonists as if in reflection of the twisty-turny plot.

Verdict: Zero Hour is crazy, but a lot more entertaining (if for the wrong reasons) than a lot of other, more po-faced series…

Episode 5 ‘Suspension’: 7/10

Brian J. Robb

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